Monthly Archives: November 2014

I'm no big fan of Charles Schumer, but he made some good points recently, urging the Democratic party to articulate positions that actually help people. I think he's wrong in treating advancing “middle class” positions and passing health care as being mutually exclusive, nor is he right about health care only affecting a small non-voting […]

As I noted in a previous post, the Democratic down ticket didn't do too well in these parts. One of our new Republican legislators is John Scott. John's campaign consisted mainly of distortions of his opponent's record. On the issues, he mainly confined himself to a fierce and unaccommodating dedication to the interests of insurance […]

I have, in the past, compared our bigger banks (looking at you, JP Morgan Chase) to organized crime. It's hardly an original idea; in fact, only our major media and law enforcement agencies appear to have missed the parallels. Still, it's good to see someone do the work of putting the pieces together for future […]

Now here is a religious group performing a public service: The Orange County School Board last week discussed reversing its policy that allows religious groups to hand out materials at public schools after the Satanic Temple began handing out coloring books to students, the Orlando Sentinel reported. “This really has, frankly, gotten out of hand,” […]

I have to pass this along, just to prove that I'm not entirely crazy. A few days ago I made a list of a number of policy positions the Democrats should take to attract, you know, voters. Among my suggestions: forgiveness of student debt and free college education. Well, I'm not alone at any rate. […]

The meme seems to be taking hold, at least among the citizens of Left Blogistan, that Democrats lost big this year because they have no coherent message and offer voters no particular reason to vote for them, relying instead on the argument, express or implied, that you should vote against Republicans. While that latter statement […]

I don't pretend to be an expert in the criminal law, but I'm sure if you're average street person violates again while they're on probation, their violation is rarely “waived”. But, not surprisingly, it's different for banks. It seems that the SEC often makes deals with banks that provide that, should they run afoul of […]

So, I'm beginning to decompress from Tuesday's disaster. Overall, I think I agree with the analysis here. In a nutshell, we lost because the national party has sold its soul to Wall Street and corporate interests, but it is still not as satisfactory to those interests as the Republican Party, which is a wholly owned […]

Have you ever noticed that the more loudly people proclaim their Christianity, the less like Christ they behave? I don't think anyone would argue with the premise that Bible Thumping gets louder the farther south you go, yet only in the South would they pass a law against feeding the hungry. It outlaws the public […]

We just returned from Drinking Liberally. I'm happy to report that turnout was up (misery loves company), and so were spirits. After all, if we don't find a way to blow it, 2016 should be our year. But I must comment on a phenomenon that we observed here, though it was obviously not so pronounced […]